Joel has field expertise in large-scale systems change, high performance work systems, negotiation and dispute resolution, cyberinfrastructure, labor-management relations, new technology, and related matters. He has led change initiatives at team, enterprise, industry, and national levels. As a scholar, Joel has advanced theory and method in industrial relations, negotiations, institutional analysis, organizational behavior, information systems, employment law, cross-cultural studies, and other areas of social science.

Profile

Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld is a professor in the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, where he leads research on agile institutions and teaches classes on strategy and operations. Previously he served as a professor and dean in the School of Labor and Employment Relations at the University of Illinois, United States. Joel serves as editor for the Negotiation Journal at the Program on Negotiation at the Harvard Law School. Joel is an award-winning author who has co-authored or co-edited eleven books, including Designing Reality: How to Survive and Thrive in the Third Digital Revolution (Basic Books, 2017), Inside the Ford-UAW Transformation: Pivotal Events in Valuing Work and Delivering Results (MIT Press, 2015), Multinational Human Resource Management and the Law (Edward Elgar, 2013), Valuable Disconnects in Organizational Learning Systems (Oxford University Press, 2005), Lean Enterprise Value (Palgrave, 2002), Knowledge-Driven Work (Oxford University Press, 1998), and Strategic Negotiations (Harvard Business School Press, 1994), and over ninety-five articles, book chapters, and policy papers on high performance work systems, transformation in labor-management relations, negotiations and conflict resolution, economic development, and engineering systems. He has helped to lead large-scale change initiatives in public and private sectors in Australia, Bermuda, Canada, England, Iceland, Jamaica, New Zeeland, Panama, and the United States. Joel’s current research is centered on stakeholder alignment in complex systems – a foundation for institutions in the 21st Century.

Courses Taught

HS

252b

Strategic Management

HS

258a

Operations Management

Awards and Honors

Inducted into Beta Gamma Sigma as a Heller MBA faculty member
(2018)

Joe Isaacs Lecture, cosponsored by Monash University and the University of Melbourne
(2015)

President, Labor and Employment Relations Association
(2009 - 2010)

Best Paper (with Nancy Leveson), International System Safety Conference
(2004)

Engineering Sciences Book of the Year Award, International Academy of Astronautics
(2003)

Cutcher-Gershenfeld, Joel. "Book Review Essay: A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations: An Analysis of a Social Interaction System. By Richard Walton and Robert McKersie.." Rev. of A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations, by Richard Walton and Robert McKersie. Industrial and Labor Relations Review vol. 68 2015: 955-960.